Highs and Lows of Dust Assassination.

I am a dust assassin, for hire.

At least that is what I call myself to make my job description slightly more...edgy.
...I am more commonly known as a 'cleaner.'
I do 3 houses, one tanning salon, and a law office and I make good money doing it.

Believe it or not, I am not just cleaning other peoples dust and grime for the money it brings out. I actually LIKE cleaning. I love to look at a good mess and make it go away; classic before and after. Honestly, my favorite part is that I work solo. I am fully capable working of working for or with people but... I would just rather not. I like to be in control and if I am the only one, I get that privilege. We'll leave it at that and move on.

But dust assassinating isn't all fun and games (actually, there is no fun and no games but, you get what I am sayin'). Sometimes it is an epic battle for cleanliness. Sometimes the dust fights back. More often the tools for fighting the dust fight back; namely, my arch nemesis the vacuum cleaner.

Yesterday there was one such previously mentioned battle. I was cleaning a nice house, out on a lake (a summer home, but some pastors were coming to stay in it so the family wanted it cleaned out) and it had come time to vacuum the hardwood floors with their central vacuum cleaning system.
So I popped the attachment for floors on and flicked the switch which SHOULD have trigger suctioning.

No such luck.

I look into the metal pipe-like thing which connects to the hose; there appears to be a mass of somethin' blocking it.

I go to pull the pipe-like thing off, but it is kind of difficult, so I pull too hard and yank the metal piece back into my face. Minor blood loss followed, and I now have a half inch long cut under my left eye. Dust assassinating isn't for the faint of heart.

Now I am holding a paper towel on my eye and looking under sink cabinets for a pipe snake or something long and snake-esk to clear out the thing so I can vacuum the darned floor.

No such luck again. People must not keep pipe snakes in their summer homes...

I put my Macgyver thinking cap on and look around for something I can substitute. In the laundry room there is a wire coat hanger. Good enough.

I straighten that baby out and start jabbing it down that clogged vacuum pipe. Whoa, the thing has like an inner blockade of unidentified substance.

After more prodding and stabbing out pops a wad of... black hair.

I kid you not, it was like a golf ball of...hair. As if someone had brought a gorilla out to the lake house, given him a good shave, and then vacuumed it up. I was a little surprised but glad that I was at least winning.

I look down the pipe again. Still clogged. I continue with my jabbing and eventually I have about 6 wads of...gorilla hair...on the floor before me.

I still have NO IDEA how in the off season of the summer home (And I cleaned it in December last for some Scottish missionaries, and I did not vacuum any primates), this had managed to occur. Somethings just cannot be explained...

But at the end of the day, I won. I beat that vacuum. And the gorilla fur. And the evil forces of dusty darkness...

Dust assassination might not be easy, but it sure is an adventure. And if you can get out with your eyes intact and only a little blood shed, it makes for a pretty satisfactory job.